{"id":9637,"date":"2013-06-05T22:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T02:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=9637"},"modified":"2024-12-04T17:52:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T22:52:51","slug":"digging-topeka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=9637","title":{"rendered":"Digging Topeka"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"05<\/a>Linda Burton posting from Topeka, Kansas <\/i>\u2013 \u201cIt is novel, of Indian origin, and euphonious of sound.\u201d Rev S Y Lum is purported to have said that\u00a0about the word \u201cTopeka\u201d when he proposed it for the city\u2019s name on January 1, 1855. He also claimed it was \u201ca name not found in the list of post offices of the United States, nor in any lexicon of the English language.\u201d Fry W Giles, one of the founders of Topeka, recorded that the founders liked the name \u2013 \u201csince it is composed of three consonants \"05<\/a>alternating with three vowels, it is easy to pronounce.\u201d It was adopted unanimously the next day. Topeka<\/i>. I was in track-down mode, looking for the name origin of the city. Little did I suspect that potatoes<\/i> would be part of the story I found. John Dunbar, a professor at Washburn University in the 1870\u2019s, wrote that the name \u201cTopeka\u201d is composed of three words common in the languages of the Iowa, Omaha, and Kansa Indians; \u201cto\u201d means potato, \u201cpe\u201d means good, and \u201cokae\u201d means to dig. He believed that the word Topeka literally means \u201ca good place to dig potatoes.\u201d To dig potatoes? I had to dig deeper. Who originally used the name? Do potatoes really grow around here? I learned that Missionary Johnston \"05<\/a>Lykins drew a map in 1849 while living at the Potawatomi Baptist Mission and used the word \u201cTopeka\u201d as the name of the Smoky Hill fork of the Kansas River. His map was published in 1853; likely the city founders had seen it when they named Topeka in 1855. And I found much written about the \u201cPsoralea esculenta\u201d or prairie potato, by explorers and settlers crossing the Kansas River and heading west. Like John Fremont, who led multiple surveying expeditions through western territories. <\/p>\n

\"05<\/a>In the 1840\u2019s John Fremont (with Kit Carson as his guide) mapped the land along the Oregon Trail for the government. He had scientists in his party who helped him carefully record scientific names for the flora and fauna they saw as well as recording the survey descriptions of the place where the specimen was found. On June 4, 1843 (170 years ago) he wrote in his journal: \u201cWe met here a small party of Kansas and Delaware Indians, the later returning from a hunting and trapping expedition on the upper waters of the river (Kansas River) and on the heights above were 5 or 6 Kansas women, engaged in digging prairie potatoes (Psoralea esculenta).\u201d (Fremont used the scientific names for the plants he mentioned in his journals.)<\/p>\n

\"05<\/a>Many other travelers and explorers on the trail to Oregon or California described this plant and its importance in the diets of native people living on the prairie, and modern biologists corroborate their descriptions of the plant. The Psoralea esculenta is not the same as an Irish potato; sometimes called \u201cwhite apple\u201d or \u201cIndian bread root,\u201d it is oval shaped and about three inches in circumference; the interior is a white pulpy substance much like a turnip in taste. It generally grows at a depth of three to four inches in the soils of hillsides, and can still be found in undisturbed native grasslands throughout the Great Plains. The plant appears in May and blooms in June; it can be harvested into July. Pretty good evidence that people were \u201cdigging potatoes\u201d in this area long ago, I\u2019d say. So what led to the actual settlement that is now Topeka, a city of 127,473 (US 2010 Census<\/i>) and the capital of Kansas?<\/p>\n

\"05<\/a>It began as a ferry crossing on the Kansas River; established by three Indian sisters married to the French Canadian Pappan brothers; it was known as Pappan\u2019s Ferry. Wagon trains making their way west from Independence, Missouri found it a reliable spot to cross, though little else was there through the 1840\u2019s. In the early 1850\u2019s, traffic along the Oregon Trail was supplemented by trade on a new military road stretching from Fort Leavenworth to the newly established Fort Riley to the west. It was 1854 when nine men established the Topeka Town Association \u2013 among them was Cyrus K \"05<\/a>Holliday, an \u201cidea man\u201d who would become mayor of Topeka and founder of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Topeka was laid out as one of the Free-State towns after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and opened new lands for settlement. It effectively repealed the 1820 Missouri Compromise by allowing settlers to determine whether they would allow slavery.<\/p>\n

\"05<\/a>The first organized immigration to Kansas Territory was by citizens of slave states; \u00a0pro-slavery settlements were established at Leavenworth and Atchison. At the same time, several anti-slavery organizations organized to establish Free-State settlements further into the territory, in Topeka, \"05<\/a>Manhattan, and Lawrence. \u201cBleeding Kansas\u201d became the fitting name for the territory over the next years as pro-slavery and free-soilers fought to establish control; hostilities raged until the violence ended in 1859.<\/p>\n

The pros-slavery group wrote a constitution favoring slavery, but Kansas voters rejected it. A shift in the legislature occurred and anti-slavery citizens took charge. Pro-slavery laws were repealed and a constitution forbidding slavery was written. Kansas voters approved this constitution and asked the United States Congress for statehood. In interesting political turns, it wasn’t until after several Southern states had left the Union (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana) that Kansas was admitted as the 34th state on January 29, 1861.<\/p>\n

The first territorial legislature met at the Shawnee Mission at Fort Leavenworth in 1854. During the years of turmoil and controversy, Lecompton was recognized as territorial capital; when Kansas became a state Topeka became its capital. In 1862 Cyrus Holliday (remember the \u201cidea man\u201d?) donated land for the construction of a capitol building; when the Civil War ended the city began to experience growth and prosperity. By the late 1860\u2019s Topeka was a \"05<\/a>commercial hub providing many Victorian-era comforts; steamboats docked at the landing depositing meat, lumber and flour; they returned east with corn, wheat, and potatoes. Yes, potatoes.<\/p>\n

I got a glimpse of Topeka\u2019s early years at Old Prairie Town today, there\u2019s an 1854 replica log cabin with blacksmith shop and an 1870\u2019s Victorian Prairie Mansion; I wandered brick-paved sidewalks from the schoolhouse to the general store, and I \"05<\/a>sat and watched the roses bloom in the Botanical Gardens. I also drove the brick-paved tree-lined streets of Potwin Place, a neighborhood of homes dating back to the 1880\u2019s and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And since it\u2019s June, and almost harvest time, I plan to head out onto the grasslands in a day or so to look for the Psoralea esculenta plant; I\u2019ve always loved potatoes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Burton posting from Topeka, Kansas \u2013 \u201cIt is novel, of Indian origin, and euphonious of sound.\u201d Rev S Y Lum is purported to have said that\u00a0about the word \u201cTopeka\u201d when he proposed it for the city\u2019s name on January 1, 1855. He also claimed it was \u201ca name not found in the list of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4587,1723],"tags":[2363,2360,2359,2342,2362,2357,2361,2358,3087],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9637"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15608,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637\/revisions\/15608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}